Given all the baby fever in the past year, consider the following from xkcd:

Also: the New England Patriots (currently 10-2) have had winning seasons for the past 17 years, and only once (2002, 9-7) had fewer than 10 regular season wins. Over the past 16 completed season, their record is 196-60, or 76.6%. Also, in this, the twilight of Brady's career, they've been to the AFC championship game for six consecutive years. It's been a good run.

Recovering from illness, though I still have a bit of hacking cough. I am trying to ease back into a routine, and I may visit the U Toronto athletic centre (sic) in lieu of breathing cold air. I expect at the least to be back to biking for my commute rather than incubating in the Subway ecosystem.

A great personal tale of facing adversity from Kempster. We all have our battles to fight and demons to face.

Toronto is a bit too vast and packed to suit my tastes, though it is a very nice city. I would like it more if there were a large forest enclosed in its limits, like Pine Hill and the Blue Hills in Boston or Gatineau in Ottawa. My favorite city Canadian city from the standpoint of amenities, job opportunities, and urban lifestyle considerations is Ottawa; my favorite cities for their surroundings are Calgary, Whistler, or Vancouver.

Note

Also: one of my roles in OUSA is a member of the finance committee. Current other members are Pat Meehan (VP Finance), Barb Bryant (incidentally VP Youth Development), and Gary Kraught. The finance committee doesn't dictate policy; it's main role is to bring insight into OUSA's financial situation. For instance, for the 2018 budget, the finance committee is going through all our accounting data and stating clearly to the Board how much money is available for programming while staying within the fiscal discipline and constraints the Board has established. This sort of fiscal discipline was clearly lacking over the years leading up to the near fiscal collapse of OUSA in 2016.

We're looking for one or two more members to help with the financial analysis. Unfortunately, our accounting system still isn't all that transparent, so getting answers to simple questions can be challenging. I think you would be well-suited to the role if you like fiscal policy, spreadsheets, data visualization, and communicating insights about data.

To me, OUSA has three possible future directions: (1) a minimalist (libertarian?) central authority with only the most fundamental amenities - insurance, a website, rules, sanctioning, teams. No programming or services. (2) A coasting entity with no real goals, but some basic services. Has no particular agenda, but in addition to (1), provides map loans, growing set of technical services to clubs like eventreg, results, rankings. Junior coach, some ad hoc junior development. Basically all activity is club driven, and OUSA helps support this. And my preference, (3) an active entity pushing a set of key goals over 5-10 year time spans. Strategy consists of achieving a small set of broad, achievable goals and throwing money, time, and resources at those problems. Some initiatives will fail, but the general goal is growing the sport. Unlike (3), OUSA drives initiatives rather than just supporting club stuff.

Finances are a big part of which strategy we pursue, and I think some analysis is needed to understand what course we are plotting. One obvious question is how much of OUSA's income goes into the various buckets of administration (should be small), club support, teams, and other programming.

Strength training5:00 [1]

I did a little core. I don't usually log sessions up to 15 minutes in length, but my log has been really sad lately.

Actions:
1. We approved the rules changes written by Clare to reflect the Sport Working Group's proposal (which was passed at the September 16). The key points were (1) allotting one event day National Ranking Event with waived sanctioning fees for each club each year - as a "gateway" to getting more club members to attend national events, (2) allowing WY runners to look at their maps before the start for all but Junior Nationals, and (3) two minor clarifications about control descriptions and untimed legs (for safety reasons).

2. There was a second rules change in which local event starts for club dues were modified to allow for events that have multiple races in the same day and are organized as a single event (e.g. Seattle's Sprint Tournament or a set of minicourses at a school). It creates flexibility by giving two options for how local event start dues are computed.

3. At present, OUSA only had two people who could sign checks - the President (Kris) and the Director of Membership and Accounting (Robin); we voted to give the VP Finance (Pat) and Sandy signing authority.

4. Finally, we talked at great length about the budget. There are some questions the finance committee needs to dive into, but we're looking to spend about $75k on programming next year allocated among several areas. I'll publish details as soon as practical, and I encourage interested parties to attend our Board call on Dec 21.